


The Strange Case of Medium, California

by hemotyping



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cults, Detectives, Gangs, Humanstuck, Medium California, Murder, Organized Crime, fix you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8171449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hemotyping/pseuds/hemotyping
Summary: A news article from the universe of Fix You. Goes into detail of the history/backstory of Medium, CA and Alternia- basically the whole ancestor deal.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fix You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7381345) by [hemotyping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hemotyping/pseuds/hemotyping). 



Have you ever heard of a little town called Medium that sits on the edge of the Mojave desert? Well, neither had we, until we got a tip from a reader and suddenly found ourselves plunged headfirst into a tale too seemingly impossible to be fiction- a tale that continues to this very day. So gather ‘round the campfire, kids, and let us tell you a story.

Medium appears to be a quaint settlement, similar to any small town one might pass through on a road trip through California. Its population is fairly diverse, and has fluctuated considerably over the past thirty years, with an overall average around 21,000 residents. It hosts an almost closed community; though a citizen might walk past hundreds of strangers a day, they are vaguely familiar strangers, and all share a culture of normalcy, casual unity, and seclusion from the rest of the world. The residents of Medium do not welcome tourists, but do not turn them away. There is a certain  _ je ne sais quoi _ present in the air of a natural-born (or at least, naturalized before the twenty-first century) citizen, and anyone new in town sticks out like a sore thumb. Looking for the source of this slightly unusual and very particular culture brings the researcher to Medium’s shadowy and twisted history.

There was pretty much nothing out of the ordinary about Medium up until around 1990, when a man claimed to have a divine vision. In this vision, the man claimed, he saw God, or rather, Gods: two deities with faces painted like clowns who called themselves the Mirthful Messiahs. As the story goes, these Messiahs told the man that he was meant to be their voice and fist in the mortal realm. They explained that human beings were not all equal; some were born to be great, and others were born to be nothing, and they told him that these natural places in the hierarchy of the world were observed in a person’s blood- specifically their blood type. This caste system, known as the hemospectrum, ranked blood types (and thus, the people who had them) from most to least important. The Mirthful Messiahs supposedly told this man, whose blood type was AB-, supposedly the highest on the spectrum, that he had to implement and enforce this caste system, and assert his dominance over the “lowbloods”. This new world order, they told him, was to be called Alternia. (Historians have not yet ruled out hallucinogenic drugs.)

After this experience, the man found one of the only two other people in Medium who had type AB- blood, a woman whom the Messiahs had apparently put on Earth to be their regent. The two began plotting the rise of Alternia, and took on new titles: the prophet was called the Grand Highblood and the regent was called Her Imperious Condescension. 

Over the next few years, Alternia and the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs slowly developed a following, entirely underground and in secret. The remaining Medium citizen with type AB- blood, Daniel Ampora, also jumped on the bandwagon and helped HIC and GHB organize Alternia. 

Then, on March 11th, 1994, Alternia began its ascension. A lowblood was found lying on a sidewalk with her skull caved in, a :o) symbol drawn in her blood on a wall nearby. With that first killing, later called the Dawn, began a twelve-year reign of terror in Medium.

Alternia continued to gain followers, violently asserting control over the town, unofficially at first. It evaded law enforcement, silencing naysayers and killing those “below them” without a single member being caught. Slowly, it even gained control over the law enforcement, blackmailing or threatening officers to keep them away, and killing those who went against it. 

HIC and GHB had planned their rise to the t, and organized their followers so perfectly that on March 11th, 1996, exactly two years after the Dawn, the town witnessed the swearing-in of one Interim Mayor Captor, the last step in Alternia’s plan. Some believe that Captor was chosen by HIC purely for the cruel irony of his surname. Captor was HIC’s puppet, a figurehead; she exercised control over him by holding his son, Sollux, hostage (or  _ captive _ , if you will). If the interim mayor disobeyed the puppetmaster, his son’s death would be on his hands. With the start of what was cheekily called the Captive Administration, Alternia had undeniably taken control of Medium.

Others believe that Captor was chosen by HIC rather for his proximity to another important character, a man who would come to be known as the Sufferer. His first name was actually purged from all town records, to the best of our research capabilities, by the Captive Administration, but we know his surname was Vantas, and he disagreed with Alternia.

Vantas and GHB had never gotten along, or so the story goes. His blood type was AB+, putting him at the very bottom of the hemospectrum, and he suffered from sickle cell anemia. It is unclear whether blood diseases were always an abomination in the GHB’s gospel or he added it later to target Vantas, but it was there, and target Vantas it did. Already at the very bottom of the new social hierarchy (which most people staunchly adhered to, either out of belief in Alternia’s principles or, more commonly, fear of Alternia’s wrath), Vantas’s disease made him an aberration in the eyes of the Cult.

On November 6th, 1996, he spoke out against Alternia publicly, becoming the first to do so since the beginning of the Captive Administration. He attended a town hall meeting and approached the speakers’ box when the floor opened for public comment, then, looking Mayor Captor (a childhood friend) directly in the eye, courageously decried the bloody Alternian regime. At this time, GHB and HIC let Vantas walk out of the room alive as a gesture of benevolence and a demonstration of what little effect Vantas’s dissent could have. They generously gave him one full year to fully and publicly rescind his statements, or he would have no one to blame but himself for the suffering that would ensue.

He did not rescind his statements. Thinking he could take any punishment they gave him, even death, he continued to defy Alternia and created a small movement against the Cult, though most dissenters were too afraid to reveal their identities. He spoke more and more viciously about the cruelty and injustice of Alternia, and the only immediate consequences he received were reminders that he had one year to take it back. His fifteen-year-old son, Kankri, began to join him in his efforts.

On November 6th, 1997, Kankri Vantas was bludgeoned to death in front of his father. Immediately, the Sufferer had a compatriot drive his younger son, ten-year-old Karkat, out of Medium and to a place where Karkat was collected by a family friend who would care for him until a day when it was safe for him to return. That same day, the Sufferer’s mother, Rosa Maryam, disappeared and was never seen or heard from again.

Life continued in Medium. The average citizen did their best to carry on, living their life normally until such a time as a highblood might decide it was their day to die. That was the only way to cope. The Captive Administration continued; even if the populace voted a new mayor into office, the new mayor would quickly be assassinated and Captor would be made interim mayor once again.

The Sufferer, having nothing left to lose, threw himself further into his crusade. Over the next seven years, he was forced underground several times, but always managed to evade Alternia. He made allies in people such as an anonymous woman known as the Disciple, and continued to speak to the people of Medium in the hopes of changing things. Any unrest stirred up was quickly squashed by GHB, of course, and Vantas couldn’t hide forever.

On June 9th, 2004, the Sufferer was publicly tortured and executed. Yet what Alternia had intended as a warning to dissenters became instead a martyrdom. His death inspired the people of Medium to rise up as one, led by characters such as the Summoner, another semi-anonymous figure who dedicated himself to carrying on the Sufferer’s legacy (and was eventually also killed). Mayor Captor finally broke free of HIC’s iron grip, costing himself and his son their lives but destabilizing the Alternian regime. Slowly, Alternia’s foundation began to crumble; for every dissenter a cultist killed, two more seemed to appear. More importantly, the unrest began to attract higher attention at last, and state and federal law enforcement came to Medium’s aid.

On April 13th, 2006, HIC, GHB, and Daniel Ampora were taken into custody. Without leaders, Alternia soon collapsed, most of its followers eventually being arrested as well. 

In November of 2006, HIC and GHB were sentenced to death. Their sentences were accelerated due to the egregiousness of their crimes, and they were executed in February of 2008. Daniel Ampora was held in federal custody for several years in the interest of information, of which he gave some before being sentenced to life in prison in June of 2009.

Why did you never hear about this, you wonder? At the time, the situation was described as so “disturbing” that the government entities involved thought that it was wisest not to publicize it for fear that it would cause mass paranoia, or inspire groups elsewhere to copy Alternia.

But that’s not the end of the story. For nearly ten years, Medium rebuilt the casual culture of normalcy that had been developed to cope with the Alternian regime, and learned to deal with the memories of the past. Alternia was something best not mentioned, best left in the past, a story best not told. There were some residents who had moved to Medium after 2007 who didn’t even know about Alternia. Medium kept to itself, because the battles it had witnessed were ones best not shared with the world and the culture it had built was simple, uniform, and necessary to its survival.

On March 11th, 2016, a lowblood was found lying on a sidewalk with his head caved in, a :o) symbol drawn in his blood on a wall nearby.

Since then, there has been at least one killing a week. Mayor Feferi Peixes, daughter of HIC, was assassinated after declaring that Alternia had returned and speaking out against it. Interim Mayor Kanaya Maryam, daughter of Rosa Maryam, was attacked just a few weeks ago. The investigation of Alternia is headed by Detective Terezi Pyrope, a senior officer, and Detective Karkat Vantas, the living son of the Sufferer, who returned to Medium in August 2010. Little progress has been made so far on the investigation, but the duo are confident that there will be a breakthrough any day now. One thing is certain, though: this time, the eyes of the world will be watching the desert town of Medium, California.

* * *

 

When reached for comment, Detective Vantas said, “You really won’t f*cking leave me alone, will you? Fine, okay. My personal life is just swell and the information you’re asking for is classified. Now get out of my office, I’m trying to save lives here. Go. ... Oh, for sh*t’s sake. TEREZI! COME GET THESE MICROPHONE-BRANDISHING IMBECILES OUT OF MY OFFICE.” 

Karkat Vantas is now twenty-nine years old. He will be getting married in early October.


End file.
